Summer trials

Warm season trials

It has been a hectic couple of weeks at Steed Farms. Our whole family has been sick for the last couple of weeks, and I have flown to New York to share in the wedding of my cousin Bridget Steed. I met my brother Kevin, Dad, and four cousins from NY and two cousins that flew over from Ireland (Micheal Steed and his wife and Gavin Steed). Had a great time catching up. I designed my Brothers back corner for a garden and small orchard while I was visiting. He has a beautiful spread to work with. It is not too large to be much to manage but just the right size to be very quaint and productive.

After coming home I sold all our carrots to the Corner Store where they were having carrots as the featured item on a cooking class. I will miss not looking at them anymore and being impressed that I grew such a great carrot crop. I also sold them some cucumbers. We are at about 4 marketable cucumbers per plant at about .5 lbs per cucumber. That's not bad yields. They still look like they are going strong.

We are harvesting blackberries, blueberries, zucchini, and some tiny peaches. I can't seem to get my peaches to size up on the trees. They keep dropping off at about 1.5 - 2 inches. The bad thing is that they seem ripe. If any one knows what I am doing wrong please let me know. Our squashes are all virus infected and the melons are starting to go downhill from powdery and downy mildews. That happens every year. They form great fruit and almost make it to maturity and then the vines die. Cucurbit crops are hard to grow down hear organically. Our tomatoes are the best tomatoes I have ever grown. they look great and have a load of fruit on them now. The pepper and eggplant look fine now as well. The topical pumpkins are doing very well right now. They have huge flowers as big as my hand and tiny pumpkins started.

Tropical pumpkin female flowers

I have tied up the pole beans, eggplants, and tomatoes. I have also top dressed with the 8-2-4 over most of the plants. My daughter also helped me plant the ornamental corn.